Sunday, January 10, 2010

Stamp It Out

The United States Postal Service has released its schedule of stampage for 2010. This is the Post Office's annual effort to capture the country's culture and history on a small sticky piece of paper and to remind Americans, at least the ones still paying their bills through the mail, that they really don't know shit about the country and its famous citizens and places.

This year, really, not much to complain about here. A celebrity saint, a celebrity star, celebrity cowboys and the dispossessed sports celebrity. Fairly standard fair for stamps.

SBD often uses the fancy stamps for bills and whatnot. This past year he has used the Simpsons series exclusively for his monthly payment to his city social club, and yet his membership persists. So, it's doubtful that the letter slicer at the club or the mortgage company or the insurance company is giving two seconds thought to the postage used, otherwise SBD would be an uninsured homeless social outcast. These stamps are really just a small opportunity for the letter sender to make a statement about themselves, because it's so hard these days to find a billboard on which to declare one's stand on who the really important fake cowboys were. SBD uses the Simpsons stamps because they say, "I'm a fake counterculture nerd who reveres a cartoon that respects nothing and no one, including you. In fact, Fuck You, here's my check, don't sit on it, and pass me a donut."

Other stamp groups will include Sunday Funnies, Famous Sailors, and Abstract Expressionists:

Boring!!!! How about they let us doodle in the upper corner of an envelope and write $.44 over it?

The only stamp offered this year that allows SBD to send a hidden message to his creditors is this one:In other news, FedEx and UPS announced that they are sticking with their purple, white and gray and brown and white, respectively, untearable bags and boxes and hideous, incomprehensible bar code labels. Both companies cited the need to stay competitive, efficient and focused on the business at hand - sending people's crap from one end of the country to the other as quickly as possible, and to keep costs down by not hiring artists and establishing committees to sweat over the most politically correct collection of cultural icons and not spending gobs of money advertising the availability of special stamps featuring Denis the Freakn' Menace.

Perhaps in 2011, the Postal Service can celebrate entrepreneurialism and efficiency with stamps featuring head to head competitors, such as FedEx and UPS.